


The Portrait

by lucius_complex



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Deathfic, M/M, Romance, Romance if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-05 20:03:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucius_complex/pseuds/lucius_complex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Art is subjective; and sometimes even a little obsessive</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Портрет](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3781552) by [berenica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/berenica/pseuds/berenica)



 

1

 

The doorbell jarred him out of his reverie. When he answered it, the two delivery men’s eyes grew as big as saucers.

 

‘Ell, you’re ‘Arry Pohte!’ exclaimed a reedy redhead with a strong Scottish brogue.

 

Harry ignored the exclamation. ‘You have a delivery?’ he asked brusquely.

 

‘Blow me down, well I never thought I’d meet—’ the second delivery man, a beefy, curly-haired chap faltered under Harry’s hardening expression, and coughed. ‘We do have a delivery, sire. Cept that its for a Mister James Evan—’

 

‘Get in,’ Harry interrupted, turning his back on the gapping deliverymen and limping back into the living room. He gestured at a white sofa, one of two solitary pieces of furniture in the living room. ‘Put it down here, gently.’

 

Wincing under the weight of the broad, flat package, the two men stepped gingerly over the threshold and navigated awkwardly forward, paying more attention to Harry than the package. The reedy redhead bumped his nobly knee on the woodn edge of the sofa, and the package tilted forward warningly.

 

Harry waved his cane angrily. ‘Be careful! I said to put it down gently,’

 

‘Oh, don’t you worry, Mister Potter sire! She’s arrived safe and sound, with nary a hiccup,’ the chubby man said, giving the package a pet.

 

Harry stared at the man’s beefy hand petting down the slightly crumpled brown paper. ‘Give me the papers,’ he said in a soft voice.

 

‘Ah yes, of course,’ The thin redhead said. ‘Here you are sire, if you’ll just sign here, here, and here— oh yes, and this copy here is for you…’

 

Harry flipped rapidly through the pages of fine print. ‘You did make sure there were no shrinking spells or _Unbreakables_  used.’

 

‘None at all. The bosses did thought your request rather odd of course, and a couple of spells would have made it all that much easie—’

 

‘—and cheaper,’ the chubby delivery man pointed out. ‘To follow your request to the letter we had to do it like the Muggles—’

 

‘Shouldn’t you be going now?’ the strain of putting up with this small exchange was showing in Gryffindor’s low, quiet voice.

 

‘Erm, yes, of course. We’ll just peel it out for you and be off—’

 

‘ _Don’t_  touch it!’ Harry said sharply at the chubby delivery man, who was just about to lay his substantial fingers on the package again.

 

‘Of course, of course,’ the Scottish redhead placated, lifting up his hands. ‘Ye’ll want the pleasure of opening it for yourself. Must be something quite precious, he?’

 

Harry nodded tersely. ‘It is.’

 

***

 

A heavy cloak of silence descended the living room. It was a smallish space, deliberately devoid of much furniture and personal affects. Harry sat down on the edge of the sofa, running a light hand down the two meter long brown paper frame, and feeling the bumpy cushion of the bubble wrap within. A bottle of wine stood on the naked mantelpiece above his fireplace.

 

He decided to light a cigarette instead.

 

Harry stood up, resting his weight on the cane, and scanned the empty spot on the wall again, where a nail had been hammered exactly a head above his own height. The smoke from his cigarette clouded the room slightly in a thin veil of white. The windows were closed, heavy curtains drawn across its rails. He had forgotten to set any of the usual airing charms.

 

He felt irritated by his lack of foresight in remembering to retain his ashtray when he had cleared his other furniture and personal effects away from the room. The ash fell in random patterns on bleached, wooded floorboards as he moved awkwardly around the sofa, working off a case of jitters that he hadn’t experienced in years.

 

_Maybe I shouldn’t do this._

 

_Too late. Its done._

 

_Return it. Its practically stolen property._

 

_Who’ll miss it? Who gives a shit about him anymore?_

 

_I do. And I deserve this._

 

He takes a long draw and threw the half smoked cigarette on the floor, crushing it negligently beneath a boot before approaching the sofa.

 

The brown paper tore with a disproportionately loud sound. Next he scraped off the pieces of spellotape and peeled off numerous layers of bubble wrap, till his fingers finally brushed the black velvet material that lay under it. For some moments it stayed there, burrowed in the plush fabric, beneath where  _his_  face should be.

 

He pushed himself off the sofa, hoisting the velvet covered portrait firmly over his head. His left leg threatened to give way, but his head had always been more stubborn than his body, and slowly, he shifted the few feet from couch to wall. He grunted as he finally leaned his back against the wall to catch his breath, leg on fire.

 

He hung the portrait on the nail gingerly. The feel of the frame in his hands was firm and smooth. His fingers lingered over the velvet again; such an appropriate herald for him, really.

 

_I deserve this._

 

He took a deep breath before firmly drawing the velvet cover away.

 

The moonlight painted face of Severus Snape became revealed, animated, blinking against the sudden light. Harry watched the portrait’s dark, sharp eyes rapidly regain focus, and the expression of recognition flitting through his features before dissolving into carefully schooled disinterest.

 

‘You.’ His voice was unaltered, sharp as glass, blunt as unpolished truths.

 

Harry’s mouth tightened. ‘Yes.’

 

For the first time since the war they regarded each other.

 

*


	2. Chapter 2

 

2

 

‘How did you obtain… this portrait?’

 

Harry knew he almost said  _me_. ‘I asked for it.’

 

‘Impossible. Hogwarts policy would never have-’

 

‘Because I  _can_. You of all people should know this, Severus,’

 

Snape’s eyebrows narrowed in displeasure at this familiarity. ‘Indeed. Minerva must have gone soft under the efforts of rebuilding the-‘

 

‘Minerva is  _dead_.’ Harry interrupted him.

 

The portrait stilled and lost its antagonistic features.

 

‘I’m sorry. I knew that you both were close-,’

 

‘I was  _not_ -’

 

‘-although neither of you would care to admit it.’ Harry finished.

 

The portrait of Snape choose not to acknowledge Harry’s opinion. ‘Why have you brought me here?’

 

Harry shrugged. ‘To talk.’

 

‘Don’t be impertinent.’

 

Harry looked angry for a second, and then he actually laughed; as Snape stared down at him, thunderous and incredulous, he still found himself leaning against the wall and chuckling till his hands clutched at his naval.

 

‘I’m sorry. It’s just been a long time since I heard four-syllable insults declared on my manners. Most people nowadays consider ‘git’, ‘fuckwit’ and ‘shut up’ a more than adequate form of chide these days.’

 

‘No doubt from the very real fear that any proper palaver with the slightest intellectual edge to it would evade your thick skull.’

 

‘Death doesn’t really sweeten your disposition much, does it?’ Harry asked with a small smile- his first in some months.

 

There was a long pregnant pause as Snape blinked down at him, as if life as a portrait has made him rusty in replying to irritating ex-students with broken limbs and broken spirits.

 

“I loathe sugar,” he said at last.

 

‘I remember,’ Harry said softly. His hand fluttered to his cane and stayed there, like a trembling bird.

 

_It’s a start. It was enough._

_It had to be._

 

*

 

It was all too soon before Severus remembered the use of his acerbic tongue and wasted no time returning his unique brand of vitriol to as fine a form as their training days, when Voldemort was still a threat and Harry still fantasized about the white picket fence, 2.5 kids and dog he would someday have when it was all over.

 

Snape insulted, indicted, and impugned every aspect of Harry’s life. He made uncivilized remarks about Harry’s non-existent social life and insinuated that his smoking habit had much to do with it. He ejected incarcerating observations about the ineffectual hash Harry must make out of his ornamental job in the Ministry- albeit without the slightest idea what work it was the dark-haired man hobbled through the Floo for every morning.

 

And when he was done with that moved on to innocuous trivialities like Harry’s inability to wear a tie in the proper manner and the execrable condition of his hair. He threw in incalculable comments in about the tasteless decor, almost as a bonus.

 

In short, it all seemed to go back to normal.

 

The one thing Severus never insulted was Harry’s pronounced limp. The portrait neither looked at his leg, nor addressed the snake-headed cane that sometimes came alive and hissed at him, and in general did an impressive job of pretending the injury didn’t exist.

 

*

 

The Floo came to life, and Harry limped through the flames and settled into the couch with sigh of relief.

 

“Hello, Severus,” he said softly. “How was your day?”

 

“Passable, up until to two seconds ago,” Snape  replied with his usual bellicosity.

 

‘Too bad for you; I’ve got a lovely Black Muscat with me here that I intend to enjoy at leisure tonight.’ Harry told him lazily as he Accioed a goblet from the kitchen. ‘Though I do think it’s a dammed pity you weren’t painted holding a glass. Bit awkward, being the only one able to enjoy this.”  

 

‘I quite agree with you. Prolonged time subjected to you questionable company would drive any sane person into drink.’

 

 ‘Hmph. Back, if you please, to the reason for celebration,’ Harry lifted his glass at the portrait. ‘To my new promotion.’

 

‘No doubt undeserved.’

 

‘Why, Harry, you don’t say! Well done, old man, heartiest congrats!’ Harry mimicked sardonically. ‘Thank you, Severus, something quite timely if I say so myself-’

 

‘I daresay the ability to talk to one’s own self is always useful for those who seem to have no friends.’

 

Harry grinned and gestured with his glass. ‘And even more so when one has snarky friends.’

 

‘We were not friends, Mister Potter,’ the rich voice held a note of warning. ‘Not when I first had the misfortune to be saddled with you as a student, and not on the day I died.’

 

Harry’s eyes misted over with fond reminiscence as he leaned back into the chair. ‘No. I guess we were never friends.’

 

The conversation fell away for a few minutes as Harry drifted into the past and Severus stared at his former protégé with dawning suspicion.

 

The Gryffindor broke into a sudden chuckle. ‘Remember when I used to come in and sit in front of you during detention? I used to count the buttons on your coat to pass the time. Twenty seven buttons. Again and again and again.  _Twenty seven._ I used to think, who the hell wears twenty seven buttons? But I think… perhaps that might have had something to do with it.’

 

‘With what?’ Snape’s voice was a whisper.

 

‘With the fact that, one day-‘ Harry blinked owlishly, eyes still hazy. ‘One day, I found that I wanted very much to open them. The buttons.  All twenty seven of them.’

 

His head fell back on the sofa again. ‘Drove me crazy, you, and your bloody buttons.’

 

The silence between them fell again, this time a heavy, cloying cloak that separated the past from the present, the living from the dead, the want from the reality.

 

 Harry didn’t look at Snape’s face  as he continued; ‘I still count them every time I look at you, you know. Every time we talk. Every dream I have. All twenty seven of them, over and over again. After you-‘ Harry paused, a veil falling over his eyes. 

 

‘After Voldermort, there was so much fucking rebuilding work to be done… I didn’t miss you.’ A snort. ‘Who would?’

 

Snape remained silent, so Harry sighed and continued; ‘But I stared seeing twenty-seven everywhere.’

 

 *

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

3

 

Severus had been refusing to look or talk to him the whole weekend.

 

Harry drank his gin and lit his cigarettes and waited him out. Patience was something he had acquired along the way, mostly too late for anything- or anybody- that really mattered, but it still had its uses.

 

Predictably, Snape finally exploded. ‘Potter,  _why_  in the four founders are you still sitting here, lolling about like an indolent adolescent?’

 

Harry hid the smile that threatened to curl his lips by taking a long drag of his cigarette. ‘It’s a Saturday, Severus. People relax on Saturdays. Well, non-evil Potion masters do, anyways.’

 

The portrait reined in his temper visibly. “Then where are the appalling toadies to whom you usually gravitate? And for that matter, when is the last time you associated with one of your own kind?’

 

‘I’m afraid you’re going have to be blunter than that, Severus. Gryffindor, you know.’

 

‘For Christsake!” Snape roared. ‘Somebody  _alive!’_

 

Harry pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. ‘I have  _plenty_  of friends...’ He trailed off as Snape raised a disapproving eyebrow, ‘-colleagues at work, and such.’

 

‘And  _such_ ,” Snape echoed archly. ‘Thank you for explaining that so succinctly.’

 

‘People my age don’t want a crippled man hobbling after them,’ Harry elaborated patiently, patting his right thigh. “And the old Boy-Who-Outlived-His-Usefulness status would just make them overbearingly stiff and solicitous.” He said ‘boy’ in a disdainful, self-mocking tone.

 

Instead of snapping back, Snape seemed to have deflated at the mention of Harry’s injury. ‘I didn’t think you would run of out steam so fast,” he grunted. ‘You always struck me as somebody who had a great deal of… stamina.’

 

‘That comes, came, with interest.’ Harry said shortly. ‘Objectives which I no longer possess.’

 

‘So right of you then to prefer wasting your life away in front of your fireplace, conversing with charmed a trinket.”

 

Harry narrowed his eyes. ‘You are not a trinket.’

 

‘I’m a painting! I have no soul!’ Snape snarled, lifting his arms. ‘These are made of paint, Potter! Pigments!’

 

‘So what? You had ice and vinegar running through your veins when you were alive anyways; what difference does a little paint and turpentine make?’

 

To Harry’s infinite bemusement, Snape seemed struck speechless by this reply, so he continued; ‘Oh don’t be so stuffy, Severus. You’re dead, for Merlin’s sake. What kind of Victorian morals do you need with you beyond the Veil?’

 

‘Whereas  _you_  could obviously afford to learn some-’

 

‘And what would you have me do?’

 

The portrait seemed to be turning purple. ‘I want you to get out of this mausoleum and  _live!_ ’

 

‘Don’t you get it, Severus? In this room I am.’ 

 

‘Living by definition involves living in the  _present,_ you obnoxious imbecile.’

 

‘We  _are_  in the present.’ Harry replied grimly. ‘You, dead. Minerva, Dumbledore, Sirius, Remus, Ron, Fred, Percy, Hagrid: all dead.  Hermione broke her wand. This is my present, the big fucking present that life saw fit to give me. So-  _cheers._ ’ He lifted his bottle in mock salute. ‘Because I’m hardly about to forget how much in the present I am anytime soon, Professor.’

 

The portrait folded his arms and glowered. ‘You are holding me here against my will.’

 

‘What will? You just admitted you don’t even have a soul!’

 

‘And yours have obviously leaked out from your ears as well, along with your conscience. Or would that be genetic deficiency?’

 

Harry flung his goblet into the wall with a violence that belied his usually placid demeanor. ‘I wont play these little verbal games with you, Severus. I’m no longer a child!’

 

‘Only a  _child,’_ sneered Severus,  _‘_ would play the forgotten martyr with as much relish as you, boy!’

 

Harry folded his arms and stared at the discomfited portrait for long moments with narrowed, scornful eyes. ‘Very well. Since you’re such a fan of the present, Professor, let me make your  _present_  situation a little clearer for you.’

 

Apprehension dawned in painted eyes “You-”

 

Harry cut him off. ‘You are a piece of property now, Severus. A piece of portrait, which  _I_  own.’

 

‘Which you  _stole-_ ’

 

Harry’s gaze was steady, cold. ‘Your point?’

 

Snapes face, which had been red with anger, turned white as the blood drained from his face. ‘You miserable, ungrateful little  _shit_ ,’ he sputtered, almost incoherent with rage. ‘After everything I did for you-’

 

‘You could learn a little about gratefulness from me, you bastard, I had you snatched from the  _brink_  of incineration-‘

 

‘-never  _learned_  to mind your own bloody business even after all these  _years_ -’

 

‘-just because you’re too  _dead_  to realize that the ministry took over the school last year-’

 

‘-this is what spent our whole  _lives_  teaching brats like you: how to waste your lives-”

 

‘They closed the school, Severus. Hogwarts is  _dead._ ’

 

The potions master stopped talking, his features taking on an uncontained, almost afraid expression. Harry unfolded his arms and respectfully averted his eyes – but he could not deny the sudden relief in his lungs, as if these were words he had wanted to utter for a long time.

 

He waited several moments before saying, in a softer voice; ‘See, the thing about truth is, sometimes, you think someone deserves better. And it’s not arrogance, its… justice. Just justice.’ Harry thought about what he just said, then added, a little uncertainly; ‘Er, you know I’m not talking about myself, right?’

 

‘Even I’m not that obtuse, Potter.’ The portrait sighed. 'You have Albus' style of thinking, in that regard. I wished I had known to learnt it, when I was still alive.’

 

‘They say when the student is ready, the master appears.’

 

Snape opened his mouth, shut it, and after a pause, inclined his head in grudging acknowledgment. ‘Touché.’

 

Harry smiled. A page was turning, what it would lead to, the world weary Gyrffindor didn’t know, but he could felt the feathery wings of long absent hope, and the faint resulting breeze cooled the long banked embers of his anger and grief.

 

*

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

When Harry opened the door, he was dismayed to find the same delivery man at his doorstep. The reedy redhead had a new partner with him this time, a beefy man with dirty blond hair whose forearms was bursting out of his shirt sleeves.

 

‘Bloody ell, it IS the Harry Potter.’

 

‘Told you,’ the red head said smugly. ‘Didn’t believe a word of me, when I told ‘im that Mister Harry Potter was living right ere, in Tippin Medows.’

 

‘You can’t come in,’ Harry told them with firmly as he closed the door behind him and snatched up the delivery docket. ‘Just leave the package here, and I’ll take care of the rest.’

 

‘Are you sure, Mister Harry sir? I mean, your leg ain’t what it used to be, and this un’s even heavier than the last-’

 

The other man was still goggling at him in disbelieve. ‘Cor, I don’t suppose you can give me an autograph? For me Nancy, shes got photos of you and everything.’

 

‘I’ve signed extra copies of the release forms, you can have those. Now get out.’ Harry told them quietly as he handed their docket back. ‘Go.’

 

He waited for the two men disappear from view, shoulders tense with agitation, before cautiously opening the door as widely as possible. The sparse, unlived-in impression of his hall gave him a sense of foreshadowing, as if nobody lived in this place but ghosts and memories, all which would vanish into a wisp the moment  _real_  people, living  _real_  lives; color, sound, laughter - the taste and bustle of industry…

 

For a brief moment he does not remember where he is, or even who. Then, feeling irritated by the sense of vulnerability that suddenly descended upon him, Harry threw his cane on the sofa, pushed up his sleeves and begun to push the heavy package across his doorway and onto the middle of the hall. It moved sluggishly, aided by the smooth wrapping.

 

‘Nostalgic, I see, for the tender days of laboring like a common muggle at the abode of your execrable relatives,’ the portrait of Severus Snape observed silkily.

 

‘I’ve a gift for you,’ Harry told him brightly. ‘It’s a little charm resistant though.’

 

 ‘And probably taste resistant as well, seeing as  _yours_  is so questionable.’

 

‘Why don’t you just get off that high horse,’ Harry grunted, ‘-and admit that you’re dying of curiosity?’ Conscious of dark, assessing eyes following his every movement, he begun to tear gingerly at the wrappings.

 

They came out in jagged strips, like bandages on a mummy, revealing a highly ornate mahogany frame, dark olive linen and a solid row of copper nails on the lip – and finally the murky pigments illuminating the corners of the canvass, shimmering faintly like a river in moonlight before the last of the wrapping fell away to reveal a vista that drew an involuntary sound from the implacable portrait of Severus Snape

 

Harry cleared his throat and gestured vaguely. ‘It’s your private potions lab. Well, part of it, anyway. When they cleared out your personal effects from the dungeons-‘ Harry flushed, then continued, ‘I was there, and I took a few pictures of your workspace.’

 

‘I see,’ was all Severus said, as he surveyed the canvass Harry has flourished in front of him.

 

To say that the painting was a replica of his former potion master’s office was like likening his own house to the Versailles, so Harry hastened to explain himself while Severus was still too shocked to pounce on that blatant lie.

 

‘I embellished. Er, obviously.’

 

‘ _Obviously_ ,’ the potions master rolled his eyes, but there was a sense of wonderment in that tentative gaze. ‘May I-’

 

‘Why don’t you try?’ Harry said watchfully, quietly, as if talking to a stray and wary animal.

 

Hesitation and doubt flitted across the pale, narrow planes of that suspicious face, then he seemed to steel himself and stiffly took a step forward, flinching violently as he reappeared into the frame that Harry held.

 

The floor of the laboratory was laminated dark wood, and dark green curtains let in needle thin silvers of light from the narrow, ceiling high windows. Dark shelves housed a fantastical proliferation of thick, cracking leather-bound books, painstakingly painted with minute titles. In a discrete corner an arch decorated with preservation runes gave rise to a suggestion of an ingredients pantry beyond. The long work tables were cluttered with every imaginable apparatus, and Harry idly wondered how Severus would clear the worktop for use. 

 

The professor reached out a tentative hand to touch a slender, golden apparatus that balanced itself on six spindly legs. ‘These look familiar.’

 

‘You probably studied the blueprints of Nicholas Flamel’s laboratory before.’ Harry struggled to act as nonchalantly as he could; ignoring the sharp stare that Severus suddenly shot him. ‘I found them amongst Dumbledore’s memories, and thought there was no harm in including them.’

 

‘You went through the pensive of a dead man, Harry? How very un-Gryfindor of you.’ Try as he did to hide it, the potions master was much affected by its width & magnificence.

 

‘My sense of house affiliation has faded away a long time ago.’ Harry shrugged, hiding his own vicarious pleasure as he took in the Potion Master’s not-quite hidden reaction. ‘I took the liberty of adding a couple of features that I thought you might be interested in.’

 

He gestured at the cluttered work table. ‘They might be a tad old fashioned though, having been copied off the pensive of some rather long dead wizards.’

 

‘How very… inappropriate.’ Severus said.  

 

‘I thought the morbid irony wouldn’t be lost on you, yes.’

 

Severus picked up a book and begun to leaf through the tissue-thin pages of spidery lines. ‘A human artist would not have been able to render on such a microscopic scale,’ he observed in deceptively mild voice.

 

Harry’s smile faltered. ‘Your faith in the talent of your peers is heartwarming, as usual.’

 

The Potions Master abruptly hurled the book at Harry’s direction, where it hit the invisible barrier between them and fell harmlessly to the floor. ‘You blistering fool, Potter!

 

 ‘A simple thank you would have sufficed.’

 

‘You made this painting with dark magic!’

 

‘No I didn’t!’ Harry snapped. ‘Its faery magic, doesn’t mean its dark.’

 

Snape simply looked at him.

 

‘Its goblin art,’ Harry muttered to the floor, capitulating at last. ‘Done under Imperio.’

 

‘ _Not_   _dark_  then,’ Snape sneered.

 

‘The  _means_  the painting came about was dark, but not the item itself. Its quite safe, Severus.’

 

Snape shook his head incredulously. ‘So at last you fear nothing. No limits.’

 

‘There is nothing to fear.’

 

 ‘Something else you have in common with my last master then.’

 

‘I am not your  _master_ , you des-’

 

Severus raised an eyebrow and Harry backed down, flushing. ‘So whos going to come barging into the home of Harry Potter with a search warrant for dark artifacts?’

 

‘They cant,’ Harry said shortly.

 

‘Why not?’

 

‘Because I head the Department of Dark Artifacts,’ Harry replied, ‘and I’m not about to arrest myself.’

 

A full minute of silence lapsed before Snape threw back his head and laughed. ‘Careful Potter. Your Slytherin is showing.’

 

Harry’s mouth curved into a half bitter, half amused smile. ‘A compliment? Have I after all these years finally succeeded in impressing the implacable Severus Snape?

 

Long moments passed as Severus looked upon Harry with callous eyes. His voice, when he finally spoke, was as cold as ice. ‘Severu Snape is dead. I won’t begrudge you what ever cold comfort you can get from impressing his portrait.’

 

If Harry was a smaller man, he would have flinched. He shrugged instead, his expression shuttered and matching his former mentor for coldness

 

‘I have learnt to take what I can get.’

 

This time, it was Severus who flinched.

 

*

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

5

 

‘Severus.’

An impatient pause, burning in the air.

 

‘ _Severus.’_

 

A pointed silence from the new portrait, its only sound being the gentle bubbling of a beaker.

 

‘Look at me, damm you, before I burn that canvass down!’

 

The sardonic, dismissive look his ex-professor finally threw him would have withered most men. Harry’s alcoholic fugue protected him.

 

‘I want to proposition you-‘ Harry said, close his mouth, and tried again. ‘I mean, I have a proposition for you,’

 

‘You’re drunk. I do not cavort with drunk people.’

 

‘When did you ever cavort, period?’ Harry asked rudely. Then he rubbed at his thumping temples. ‘I- Merlin, I don’t know what’s gotten into me.’

 

‘I do. Three martinis and a bottle of gin.’

 

‘Perhaps… should put some ice on my head,’ Harry agreed blearily.

 

‘Whistle, maybe it’ll come to you.’

 

Harry glared and moved reluctantly back to the sofa, his knees tumbling over empty bottles. ‘Accio Pepper-Up potion. God how I wished it was still possible to get one of your brews. These mass-produced shite is  _vile.’_

‘Mix some mulled wine into it,’ Snape told him, after a long pause.

 

Harry grinned, and like a good Gryffindor, did as he’s told, adding quite a bit more wine than necessary. ‘What do you do with all your brewing?’

 

Snape stared sourly at him. ‘I throw it down the sink and start again.’

 

‘Ah,’ Harry said diplomatically, and cast around for something else to say. ‘It’s my birthday today, Severus.’

 

Snape’s expression was strange, his eyes glittering. ‘I know.’   
  


‘You don’t miss much do you? Have I changed much from the boy you remember?’

 

‘I dare say you still posses the same mental faculties.’

 

‘Which is to say none?’ Harry grinned lazily at the portrait in front of him. The spicy, sapid taste of his wine lulled his mood into a pleasant, mellowed sensation. ‘I’m thirty two today, Severus. The same age as you are now.’

 

‘How many times must I tell you that the Severus you keep refering to is  _dead-_ ’

 

Harry hummed dismissively around the rim of his glass. ‘Semantics-‘

 

Snape snorted. ‘Your capacity to tailor the facts of reality to suit your deluded notions is unrivaled, and like you, a general waste of space and resource.’

 

‘I think after doing away with old Snake eyes I’m entitled to a bit of wasting. In fact, I’m entitled to all the wasting I want, but you still see me going to work-‘

 

‘Work! With no talent other than convert oxygen into carbon dioxide-‘

 

‘Will you shut up? And I find it rich that the world’s foremost authority on reclusiveness would find it fit to lecture me on a want of social life, of all things.’ Harry glared at something unseen in his glass. ‘I just don’t like to go out there. It makes me feel.. invisible.’

 

‘Oh the shock and  _horror_ ,’ Snape muttered.  

 

Harry ignored him. ‘And every year that passes I feel myself becoming more… colorless.  I look at my hands and I think I see shadows. Just shadows.’

 

‘This apathy is unbecoming. And pathetic.’

 

‘Its just that I think-’

 

‘Wait: I forget. You  _don’_ t think.’

 

‘Are you capable of just  _shutting_  your gap for two minutes while I speak?’ Harry put his hand on his forehead and exhaled unhappily. ‘I wanted to say its not I think about you, its… what I feel…about you.’

 

‘When will you get it into your thick Gryffindor skull that I’m  _dead!_ You cannot change facts!’

 

‘What makes you think-‘ Harry cocked his head. ‘I wasnt trying to change anything, Severus. I’m not in denial, I never was.’

 

‘Then what do you WANT from me?’ Snape exploded suddenly, sweeping his half-boiled beaker off thee table. ‘Why have you brought me here, against my will, against the very rules of nature-‘ Snape trailed off, his eyes widening as Harry approached him, coming so close that they were eye to eye.

 

‘Stop this,’ he finally, looking exhausted. ‘You  _must_  face facts.’

 

The younger man traced a finger on one sallow cheek. ‘Can you feel anything?’

 

‘You know I  _cannot_ ,’ Severus says, but he reached out a palm, and they seemed to touch like inverted mirrors, a cruel trick of light. ‘Harry, for once in your life, listen to what I say, and burn this canvass.’

 

‘No.’

 

‘ _Burn it,_ you confounded Gryffindor! It is no more than a moving movie, a mirage. It is a lie! And you  _will_  wither before it- and you  _will_  die.’

 

‘My Erisad,’ Harry smiled sadly, ‘you know I  _cannot_.’

 

*

 

He comes through the front door instead of the fireplace one day, and collapsed in heap on the floor. Hindered by his frame, it takes a good while for Severus to spy the blood seeping out of his heavy coat, and even longer for the din that the portrait made to finally stir Harry back into consciousness.

 

‘Where is your wand?’ Severus shouted at him, furious in his agony.

 

But Harry simply shook his head and took off his broken glasses. He crawled slowly to the fireplace; a ponderous and tormented slithering aided by wet slick of blood on bleached floorboards. The fire call he takes is not to who Severus expects.

 

‘Its time,’ he says simply to the goblin in the flames, its beady eyes gleaming gold with greed.

 

‘We shall see to all,’ the goblin rasped in its oily voice, ‘once the deal is signed in blood.’

 

‘Why not? It seems I’ve plenty to spare,’ Harry shrugged with a laughed.

 

A scroll appeared before him, hovering like a question mark before him. He held up one blood stained hand, and a raven-feathered quill floated into his fingers.

 

‘Pretty,’ he whispered.

 

‘What deviltry is this?’ the potion master shouts from his limited vista. ‘Explain yourself!’

 

‘Patience, Professor,’ Harry murmured. ‘All will be revealed.’ His quill, like Umbrige’s, only took blood as its ink, but not from the surface of Harry’s skin; and the scream of pain that ripped through the man’s throat was thunder. The temperature in the room flared, and then fell into frigidity as Harry’s magical contract registered and disappeared.

 

‘It is done, Mister Potter.’

 

Harry could only gasp in reply, lying in a pool of his own blood and vomit, fingers clawing the floorboards as his body twitched in the aftershock of the magical rendering.

 

The goblin hesitated, a look of uncharacteristic burden crossing its toad-like features. ‘You are aware, Mister Potter, that _you_  will still continue to age, whilst  _he_ -‘

 

Harry nodded weakly.

 

 ‘Try to conserve as much blood as you can,’ the goblin said with finality. ‘Goodbye, Mister Potter.’  

 

‘Goodbye,’ Harry smiled softly; a lightly whispered word with a weight of lead, aimed at every one he ever knew.

 

‘What have you done?’ the portrait of Snape whispered with lips as white as hemlock. ‘Harry, what have you  _done?’_

 

*

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

6

 

 

He’d forgotten how beautiful the man was up close. How truly foreboding, how energetically…  _intense_ he was. He couldn’t stop looking. He couldn’t stop drinking in the great masterpiece that was Severus Snape; a lifetime of torment etched like wet brushstrokes onto the planes of his face. Etched like unhealed scars: a tic in the cheek from constant restraint – brows furrowed from the constant fear of failure – deep crow’s feet from his unspeakable anxiety at the folly of children who won’t, and shouldn’t, know any better – eye’s haunted by self-censure and flagellation. Fingers clenched with self denial.

 

Collars worn high to hide a surprising vulnerability. Alive and in motion, he was irresistible to Harry.

 

He was also bloody-minded.

 

Harry merely stood there and watched him mindlessly destroy his potions lab, as patient and unmoved as a stone. Nothing was broken very long in a Goblin portrait, for its magic was immutable and self-renewing as long as they both remained within the canvass. He knew from experience that when Snape was being implacable, he wouldn’t budge. Harry would have better luck moving Hogwarts to China.  


Snape continued to rant, and Harry watched him impassively. The Potions Master had a particular habit of not being able to look at the person in question when expressing his anger – something that never failed to bemuse Harry. There was particular allure to the way he tossed his hair that reminded Harry of a wild and skittish horse.

 

Yes, he could look at Severus Snape for the rest of his life.

 

‘For the last time, I didn’t commit bloody suicide, Severus. I got jumped. It happens.’

 

‘You also  _happen_  to be a poor liar.’

 

Harry shrugged. ‘I got careless. Bit hard to run you know, with this leg.’

 

‘Careless! You deliberately left your wand behind! You – it was a premeditated act!’

 

‘Oh, fuck you. Just look at me Severus, for once in your life, fucking dead as you are, just look at me.’ Harry gestured at the covered bed in a discrete corner of the portrait, ‘I’m already dead, Severus. I still have a beating heart, and thanks to Voldemort’s magic there’s a chance that I might end up living forever. But, I’d like-‘

 

A deep breath. ‘I’d like the chance… to be happy.’  


Snape didn’t reply. His dark gaze was sad, gazing at the shrouded body beyond the canvass. ‘Out there, you are still alive. Out there, you can be saved. They’d never let anything happen to Harry Potter.’

 

‘My body is preserved in a stasis spell; it can be healed, but all you’ll have is a very healthy vegetable,’ the ex-Gryffindor smiled, then beseeched softly; ‘Severus. You are the only one left who can see me as I really am.’

 

Snape didn’t reply for a long time. ‘Magic can only hold things together for so long. Is substantially prolongs the natural process, but it has never been impervious to the ultimate reality of nothingless that time renders upon all things. These pigments will fade & bleed in a couple of ten-centuries. This canvass will disintegrate-‘

 

He turned to face Harry. ‘And then, we will die.’

 

‘So we will,’ Harry agreed companionably, almost humorously.

 

‘Out of this room, Harry, is where you belong.’

 

‘Belong is such a loaded word don’t you think? I feel like I spent the first half of my life trying to belong to something, anything. And the rest of my life trying to escape from the things I was told I belonged to. Everybody I ever wanted to belong with died. You died. And then there was nothing left.’

 

‘Do not regale me with such foolish sentiment.’

 

‘What are you going to do? At most we’ll go on sniping at each other as we always have,‘ Harry shrugged ‘-which means nothing’s changed; at worst, you won’t talk to me- which given our current state of disagreement, might even be a boon.’

 

‘I cannot condone this- aberration,’ Snape said, but the denial was weak, and Harry relaxed, knowing he’d won. ‘We did… nothing, together, in life. That we should be allowed this reprieve, feels…’

 

‘I’m a firm believer in second chances,’ Harry grinned.     
  
‘The only thing you firmly believe in is that that any law of nature can be bent to suit your purposes – even life and death – without invoking cost.’

 

It was hard then, for Harry to maintain his smile. He would never tell Severus of the constant pain of the rending, like a bottomless despair and longing that would be silenced only when his body was reunited, or his soul destroyed. ‘Try to see it as insurance,’ he advised.

 

Snape grunted. ‘Smoking is not allowed in this canvass.’

 

‘Of course.’

 

‘I’ll never change,’ he warned.

 

‘I should hope not.’

 

‘Harry…’

 

‘You didn’t think it would last.’ Harry told him gently. ‘You never did, even from the beginning.’

 

‘And now, we have ourselves another beginning,’ Snape said, his voice tentative.

 

‘We do.’ Harry smiled and held out his hand. ‘I’m Harry Potter.’

 

‘Hello Harry. In _this_ canvass, you may call me God.’

 

Oh yes _,_  he could look at Severus forever.

 

*

 


End file.
